Something old becomes new again with the current production of “Yellow Face” by Roundabout Theatre, which has been produced nationally, and internationally since it opened off-Broadway at the Public Theatre in 2007. That premiere production was directed by Leigh Silverman, who takes the helm in this current incarnation on Broadway. Penned by David Henry Hwang, it is difficult to decide…
There are two paths to “disappearance” in David Cale’s engaging “Sandra” currently running at the Vineyard Theatre. The audience discovers that Ethan Martin’s path has been well thought out. Sandra Jones’ (Marjan Neshat) path on the other hand is completely reactive, random, and riddled with danger. Two paths diverge in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and the choices made by both on…
Plays parsing the viability of monogamy are nothing new. The “sacred” tie that binds “one man and one woman” have been under scrutiny since the mythic Adam and Eve stumbled out of the garden shortly after their creation and subsequent fall from grace. The current hype about the sanctity of heteronormative coupling makes the issue even more relevant despite the…
“Soft Power” – the culture-bending, plot-twisting musical within a play currently running at The Public’s Newman Theater – challenges the notion that the only effective parameters of power are money, race, and sex. These constructs of “hard” power are the hallmarks of greed, systemic racism, and misogyny and, from Xue Xing’s (a sensitive and alluring Conrad Ricamora) point of view,…
Playwright Madeleine George sets her “Hurricane Diane” in an Early Anthropocene Time, the era defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” Most, except members of the current Administration, see that influence to have been deleterious at best and are aware of the dire…
Emily Penrose (a guarded and steely Cherry Jones), Editor-in Chief of a high-end publication, hopes to score big on the publication of a “lyrical essay” written by longtime associate John D’Agata (a languid and tenderly resilient Bobby Cannavale). She has shut down the presses and pulled the story about “Congressional Spouses” to publish the essay about the suicide of a…
Harry Clarke (the persona and the person) was born out of the dysfunctional matrix of paternal abuse and maternal collusion that plagued Philip Brugglestein from his childhood through his adulthood. David Cale’s play “Harry Clarke,” currently playing at the Vineyard Theatre, is a complex and engaging psychological study of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and explores the provenance of that condition…
The brutality of war – any war – leaves its mark on the communities war leaves behind: on the land and on the people who inhabit the land. The soldiers in the fictional South American country featured in Martin Zimmerman’s “Seven Spots on the Sun,” currently playing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, leave a palm-print on a wooden plank before they…